In My Garden of Gold
by taee
Summary: If the third time that he turned her straw into gold, Angkor did not ask for Aisha's first child, no names would be guessed, and no promises would ever need to be broken to make her and the king happy. [Rumpelstiltskin AU...?]


Disclaimer: I don't own Elsword.

Note: This was written for the Elsword Fanfiction discord's monthly writing prompt: Folktales. This doesn't fit the prompt, which I realized too late, but here it is anyways.  
The folktale I'm using here is Rumpelstiltskin, which you need to know to be able to understand anything going on.  
A short summary: There's a miller's daughter who he brags about a lot, and one day he brags to the king that his daughter can spin straw into gold. She gets locked up by the king with a roomful of straw and is told to turn it to gold in the night or die. She's crying and stuff and then this weird small dude comes out of nowhere and turns it into gold in exchange for her necklace. She says yes, then the king gives her more straw, she cries, little man comes again, does the stuff for her and she gives him her ring. Then the king does it again, says she'll be queen if she can turn it all into gold one more time, and the little man comes one more time, but this time the girl doesn't have anything to give. In the original folktale, the little man asks for her firstborn child after she becomes queen, but in this story, it's a little (a lot) different. 

/ /

In My Garden of Gold

As she said the sentence that would surely spell the conclusion of their unbalanced give and take, "I have nothing left to give you in return," Aisha resigned herself to a miserable death on the gallows, her body to be picked apart by the summer sun and the birds. In the morning, she would have no gold, only a room full of dusty straw to return to the king. The little man would not save her this time, not for free.

But, contrarily, the little man narrowed his eyes and bared his teeth and grinned. "Oh, but you do. You still have your own life to give-"

"-I don't want to die!"

"I asked for your life, not your death," he retorted, plucking a piece of straw from his coat sleeve. It stiffened to shiny, yellow metal. "I promise it'll be better than a life back at your dusty little mill, or even as the king's wife. And it's certainly better than hanging. So what about it?"

They both knew Aisha could only give one answer. He'd probably made these trades specifically because of that, she thought bitterly, with the sour feeling that she'd just played right into his schemes, as she could not possibly say no.

And so the straw turned to gold, and in the morning, when the king came to collect his lovely treasure, and his lovely new wife, she vanished from right between his fingers, never to appear before him again.

\

The little man had a lonely castle at the tip of a mountain.

A stream wound around its crumbling, walled perimeter and meandered down the slopes and stones, feeding the forest of still trees. There were no gates to welcome them into the castle, nor were there any servants to light the way. The wood beams were eaten through with black touches of old, starving fires, and the walls leaned more than they stood. It seemed that ivy, maybe magic, held the shattered bricks together instead of mortar, barely hidden underneath faded tapestries and carpets, composed half of fabric, half of dust.

The castle remained a castle only through threadbare willpower, though the little man didn't show even a blink of concern. So queer, with all the money in the world in his hands, yet he couldn't even be bothered to fix up his could-be-nice house.

But then again, what was Aisha expecting? All the money in the world was in his hands, yet he for some reason still wanted her worthless life, the one that'd nearly been gone for good. He could've just asked her mother, honestly, long before any kings came into the picture. Aisha was sure her mother would bear to part with her if offered just half a skein of that beautiful golden yarn the little man could make.

In that lonely castle, past the courtyard packed full of weeds and up countless, well tread stairs, the little man showed Aisha his lair of magic. It had the soothing smell of well worn books and wet ink; a place of learning. She saw none of the rumored pickled body parts, or broiling potions, or signs of Satan. So, a relief.

"I brought you here to be my apprentice and learn magic," the little man said. "My name is Angkor."

Books, writing, learning. Those were all things she liked.

"...I'm Aisha," she replied, and she felt hope.

\

"The truth is, I'm going to die. Very soon," Angkor told her, sitting cross legged on the table as she scribbled down magic formulas he'd drilled into her head the week before.

"Hm," Aisha replied. It was a little hard to believe, given he still looked like and oftentimes acted like a toddler.

"You sound like you don't care at all. I'm your teacher! I deserve some respect!"

"Respect has to be earned, _teacher_. I'm done, by the way." She shoved the sheets of parchment into his stupidly pointy boots. Sometimes he even made her shine them. Aisha always added a mouthful spit to them whenever he forced the chore on her.

Angkor flicked a finger and the papers took to the air, spreading out evenly in front of him for him to peruse. "...Not too shabby," he admitted, albeit very, very reluctantly.

Aisha sniffed with disdain, nose upturned and lips smug. "'Not too shabby'? Please. Admit it, I'm learning faster than you did, aren't I? At this rate, I'll be better than you in no time."

He tossed the papers in her face spitefully, just to make her screech. "I'd hope so. There's not much time left for me, after all."

…..Which efficiently killed whatever cheerful mood was floating around. No tact, this teacher of hers had. No tact at all.

And as for the time limit, Aisha had plenty of faith in herself. It wouldn't be a problem.

\

In the winter, enveloped by a gentle snowfall, Aisha held out her Angkor-made staff, and violet petals drifted to the earth instead. A petal touched Angkor's outstretched hand, melting away instantly as snowflakes tend to do, leaving behind a glaring purple stain, like plum juice. It wouldn't disappear, it would only smear when scrubbed at; she'd tried.

He raised an eyebrow, unimpressed. "This is just food coloring," he said. "Creative, but annoying, and waaay too easy."

Her teacher snapped his fingers, reverting all her hard work back to a boring, white winter.

Defiantly, Aisha did her magic again. Angkor glared back.

Needless to say, the following color switching contest ended in her defeat.

In the spring, shaded by pale blossoms on the branches above, Aisha raised her Angkor-made staff, and a blast of fresh wind swept away the flowers and the pollen. Angkor hated flowers and spring, as evidenced by the mountain of used tissues left lying around the castle and his unceasing grouching, so he let that one be.

In the fall, half buried by an avalanche of leaves, Aisha raised her Angkor-made staff, and levitated the entire lot of them, making them attack Angkor instead. It was a good way to express her discontent with his terrible teaching attitude, in her opinion. He set fire to them, in the castle no less, which explained the various scorch marks, and to the ends of her pigtails. She had short hair for a while after that.

In some later summer, Aisha raised her Angkor-made staff, and during the night, she wove an illusion of cascading stars. 'Party tricks', was Angkor's comment on that one, but he must've liked it, because he didn't leave until she overestimated her limits and knocked herself out.

Then, in the passing years, she magicked fire, but also clouds. Sprinkled rain, spat thunder and lightning, collected light, spread shadows, flew, etc. Anything, everything, that Angkor knew, he taught, she learned. Aisha stopped counting in days, as they ran away from her like the seconds used to. It was such a comforting, exciting routine to fall into that Aisha couldn't remember for the life of her how she'd lived at all before this.

Aisha also could not imagine how Angkor could possibly ever die. He who had everything the world had to offer, who knew of a realm beyond reality. Surely immortality was within his reach as well?

\

It was a strange setup. One without any magic whatsoever. In fact, it was even stranger because Aisha had once seen it all before, an entire lifetime ago.

It was the suffocating, soaring tower, with the tiny window and the spinning wheel and the dust-heavy air, and of course, the endless stalks of prickly straw, lashed together in small bundles.

"Why…..?" she asked Angkor, at a loss for words, for once.

"It's the final lesson," he shrugged and answered, and at that moment his voice sounded very final indeed, so very faint and unfittingly frail. Aisha had avoided thinking about it, but in the time leading up to the present, Angkor had been….declining, so to speak. Though it'd never unsettled her as much as it did now.

Angkor motioned for her to hand over the staff she held. It was still the one with a tacky, round bat at the top, the one he'd made for her way back when she'd first been forcibly apprenticed to him. Without it, Aisha couldn't do magic. She closed her empty hands into fists.

"Basically, you'll never be able to do magic without touching this staff unless you turn all this straw into gold," he waved his hand at the dried grass.

"But why? Why do I have to do _this_ specifically? Can't I do something else?"

"It's the mages' trial. You can't use your own magic unless you do that. The reason why it's that specifically is because it's the first magic you saw. I don't know why it exists, I don't know how it works, don't ask me," Angkor said, annoyed. He hated to explain.

"Why can't I just keep using that staff?" Aisha protested. She took good care of her items, and she wasn't prone to losing things. It'd be fine even if she used it for the rest of her life.

"_Because_ that staff is part of my soul. This entire time you've been using the energy stored in my soul to do magic. And I've told you over and over haven't I? I'm going to die soon, and then the staff will too. So stop complaining and just do it!"

"How am I supposed to do it? You just said it. I can't do magic without the staff! What do I do?!" Aisha yelled at him, and kicked the spinning wheel beside her, a sense of frustration welling up, fierce and searing at the back of her throat.

"I don't know, this is your trial, not mine! Besides, you're a mage aren't you? I thought you said you were 'waaaaaaaay' more skilled than me already? Just do something!"

"How can I be a mage if I don't have magic? That makes no sense!"

"You're the mage, not the staff. Besides, haven't you learned _anything_ all this time? Haven't you memorized every magical formula there is to know? You're not the same useless waste of space you used to be, trapped in the tower, being tossed around by your mother's lies and the king's whims. Can you honestly say that you don't know what to do? Can't you do anything?"

Sure, she knew the theory behind all this transforming stuff, but again, knowledge was pointless if she couldn't able to use it. However, under the assumption that she indeed could….

"...I can do whatever I want," Aisha said as she sat in front of the loom, hands flying, while Angkor sat with his back against the wall and scribbled away busily on a piece of paper.

At first, the straw would not listen to her wishes, always splintering and coming apart every which way, but gradually, she began to hold something much more malleable and smooth instead.

In the end she was right, as always. She could do whatever she wanted.

A few hours later, she had all her skeins of gold yarn stacked haphazardly in place of all that damned straw that finally no longer had any hold over her. She stood with her hands planted triumphantly on her hips, facing down her teacher, who didn't share the same enthusiasm, for some reason, though he should've.

"...This is it, then, apprentice. You've done well," Angkor yawned. "So it's time for me to die." He stood up, shaky on his feet.

"...Die? Now? You can't be serious," she said. He had to be joking. No warning whatsoever, just out of the blue, bye bye, see you on the other side? It couldn't be. Her lungs couldn't breathe fast enough; Where had all the air gone?

But, against all her hopes, Angkor shook his head, and her staff that he held, his soul, was already losing its form, and it was obvious he was next.

He smiled at her, almost shyly. And what timing he had, to choose this particular moment to send Aisha her first smile from him. Horribly sly of him, and doubly cruel. She was frozen, stunned with something like joy, or confusion, or maybe just something twisted. For half a moment, she didn't think of trying any magics that could've chained him to the mortal plane -_sharing her life, soul transfer, stop his time_-

"Then, see you later."

"Wait-," Aisha choked out, sort of furious, _couldn't he just wait one goddamn second, or two, or three, or forever would be good_, also desperate, terrified out her mind, _what was she going to do all alone like this_, reaching out her hands-

-But he and the staff dissipated into fine, gold dust, slipping right between her fingers, never to appear before her again.

/ /

A/N: Hello again! As you can probably tell, the story is not finished, because I ran out of time. I do plan to continue this someday, as it was supposed to be an add x aisha story, but add hasn't even appeared yet! So there was a lot I still wanted to write. This is basically the prologue of the whole story.

Thanks for reading!


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